RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israel faces a twin peril, far more menacing to its survival as the nation-state of the Jewish people than the Iranian nuclear program or a Palestinian state.

The minute we leave South Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset. It will most certainly no longer be relevant when Israel returns to its internationally recognized northern border.
– Amos Oz, “Try a Little Tenderness” (Interview), Haaretz, March 17, 2000

The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood. If it becomes clear that [the Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be a temporary accord and… we will have no choice but to abrogate it. And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places it is about to leave in the upcoming months.
– Yossi Beilin, Ma’ariv, November 26, 1993

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised Katyusha rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single Katyusha rocket. Nor will there be any Katyushas.
– Yitzhak Rabin, radio interview, July 24, 1995

I realize that what follows may raise a few eyebrows – some in disbelief, some in disapproval. I have no doubt it will ruffle feathers – on both sides of the political divide – but if the unpalatable truth is to be dealt with, it must be addressed squarely and honestly.

For unless the problem raised in this column is adequately addressed before the election, it will, like the ones before it, be meaningless, with roughly the same policy being adopted, no matter which party wins, and no matter what they promise their electorate. Indeed, the only difference is likely to be in the degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance with which they adopt it.

“It is difficult to say exactly when Brandeis, an esteemed center for higher learning, was deformed into a pathetic hive of postmodernist brainwashing for the perpetually aggrieved. But, as with every American university, Brandeis was a casualty of the poisonous sixties and early seventies–affirmative action to Woodstock–and has never recovered. It is probably safe to say that the biggest factor in Brandeis’s institutional devolution was its star faculty member from 1954 to 1965, the guru of the counterculture, Herbert Marcuse. His Eros and Civilization (1955) and his 1964 One-Dimensional Man resonated with the leftist student movement, and he soon became known as the “father of the New Left.” It was Marcuse who invented probably the silliest maxim of the Sixties: “Make Love, Not War.” Jonah Goldberg, in his fascinating book Liberal Fascism, makes a persuasive case that Marcuse, in his attack on Western society and “liberal tolerance” was, like so many self-proclaimed leftists, in reality a dangerous fascist.”

“Don’t send my boy to Harvard,”The dying mother said.

“Don’t send my boy to Syracuse,”I’d rather see him dead!

“Yes, send my boy to Princeton, or better still Cornell,”But as for Bran-D-E-I-S

“I’ll see him first in hell!”

In that ancient fraternity drinking song, the original punch line was “Pennsylvan-I-A.” But now Brandeis, certified (by Daily Caller) as America’s second “Most Rabidly Leftist, Politically Correct College for Dirty, Tree-Hugging Hippies,” walks away with the honor.

What in the world has happened to Brandeis, nestled in leafy, suburban Boston, named for Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, friend to Zionism, incorruptible crusader for justice? The opening of Brandeis in 1948 was called “one of the great moments in Jewish history,” its 13-member faculty, under president Abram Sachar, a distinguished roster of artists and scholars.

Brandeis now– despite a faculty and student body on the whole devoted to the ideals of its namesake–has become a miasmic bog of crazy Left-wing ideology. L

This is how pathetic the Ferguson protest losers are – they have so little respect for anything that they’d interrupt a ceremony honoring a 100-year-old veteran.

From Oregon Live:

U.S. Navy veteran Dario Raschio was all smiles Saturday as he awaited a special honor from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, who joined him at Portland Community College’s Southeast Campus to present the 100-year-old with a handful of medals.

“I feel I’m no hero,” said Raschio, dynamic and spry, before the event. “I don’t accept it as being a hero. I accept it as being a part of my job.”

Shortly after Wyden began speaking, though, protesters erupted in the back of the room, shouting “hands-up, don’t shoot!” More than 100 pushed through the doors, banged on the windows from outside and hoisted signs.

He actually took the microphone and asked to speak to the degenerate maggots protesting, but they continued on:

A protester at the front of the room announced that “for 4.5 minutes we are going to take time to pay respect to everybody who has been killed by police in this nation.”

With that, the chanting began again. At 3:15, after waiting 45 minutes for the meeting to begin, organizers called it off.

Please share this so that more Americans, who love and revere the military, know just what little respect these cockroach protesters have for our veterans.

A version of this column will be posted Monday, Jan. 5, 2015, on the website http://yeoldecrabb.com/

The U.S. polity: a wonky fit

The polls tell us that those Americans interested in politics are split almost evenly into two groups: those who approve of President Barak Hussein Obama’s leadership and those critical of it.

Further analysis shows something quite basically differences between the two groups – and disturbing for those of us who want a country rich in diversity but engaged in a constant healthy exchange of ideas.

The President’s supporters are what my Mom in her retirement among the elderly in Florida, with some envy, used to call “the alright-nicks”. They are members of an elite who either financially or politically – or both – have disproportionately profited from the system. They see themselves, and their nominal leader, Obama, as tapped by some unseen but knowing source to lead — especially to guide a rabble [excluding themselves, of course] which does not know its own interests and therefore what is best for them.

In fact, their numbers have recently been reinforced as the economy has marginally improved and the noise around Administration scandals and policy failures has dissipated with time in a fast moving society. [IRS persecution of political opponents, veterans dying because of illtreatment at the VA, the sacrifice of lives at Benghazi, massive infractions of border security, mishandling of government lands, near collapse of the president’s personal security – Poof! Gone With the Wind!]

U.S. Immigration Policy and Exposure to Terror — on The Glazov Gang
How terrorists use immigration fraud to do us harm — and how U.S. leadership does nothing about it.
http://jamieglazov.com/2015/01/04/u-s-immigration-policy-and-exposure-to-terror-on-the-glazov-gang/

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made an extraordinary speech [1] on New Year’s Day to Cairo’s Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry calling for a long overdue virtual ecclesiastical revolution in Islam. This is something no Western leader has the had the courage to do, certainly not Barack Obama, despite his Muslim education.

Accusing the umma (world Islamic population) of encouraging the hostility of the entire world, al-Sisi’s speech is so dramatic and essentially revolutionary it brings to mind Khrushchev’s famous speech exposing Stalin. Many have called for a reformation of Islam, but for the leader of the largest Arab nation to do so has world-changing implications.

Here are the key parts as translated on Raymond Ibrahim’s blog [1]:

I am referring here to the religious clerics. We have to think hard about what we are facing—and I have, in fact, addressed this topic [2] a couple of times before. It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible!

That thinking—I am not saying “religion” but “thinking”—that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible!

I am saying these words here at Al Azhar, before this assembly of scholars and ulema—Allah Almighty be witness to your truth on Judgment Day concerning that which I’m talking about now.

All this that I am telling you, you cannot feel it if you remain trapped within this mindset. You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it and reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.

The sister of a pilot killed on Sept. 11 says Sen. Feinstein’s torture report has done the unthinkable — turned our enemies into victims

In November of 2002, my two brothers and I traveled to FBI offices in Alexandria, Virginia and met with one of the lead federal prosecutors who was working on the criminal investigation of the 9/11 attacks. We were there to watch a video animation of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that was hijacked by five Al Qaeda terrorists and flown into the Pentagon.

We were desperate to find out anything we could about the flight because our brother, Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, was its captain, the pilot in command that fateful morning.

The video we were about to see — put together from the plane’s flight data recorder, or “black box,” and FAA radar tracking — would show us the plane’s every movement, from the time it pushed back from the gate at Dulles Airport to the moment just before it crashed into the Pentagon at 530 mph, one hour and 27 minutes later.

We sat in silence for the entire duration of the video. The animation noted when radio contact ceased and when the plane’s unique radar signature, its transponder, was turned off. We watched, barely breathing, as the Boeing 757 changed course. Almost immediately after it completed its 180 degree turn, the plane began to pitch and roll violently.

We knew this was when Chic was fighting for his life. It lasted more than six agonizing minutes. And then it stopped.

Every 9/11 family member has visions of their loved one’s last moments. I don’t know who is more fortunate, those who know the precise details of their relative’s death or those who don’t — those who can only imagine it from the countless horrific images captured in real time and published over and over in the media for the last 13 years.

Every family member can speak to this, but here are the words of one FDNY firefighter about the 20,000 body parts they found, sometimes digging on their hands and knees: “Imagine that the twin towers were two giant blenders that were suddenly turned on. The people who didn’t make it out were literally torn to pieces and flung from river to river, on the streets and rooftops of Lower Manhattan.”

This is the context for the families of the victims as we watched Sen. Dianne Feinstein declare from the well of the U.S. Senate last month that the harsh interrogation of the men who plotted and carried out our loved ones’ savage murders, and who planned a second wave of terror, was “a stain on our values and our history.”

THE FOLLOWING QUOTE IS CIRCULATING ON THE INTERNET AND ATTRIBUTED TO MARCO POLO….IT HAS NOT, TO DATE BEEN VERIFIED: ” The militant Muslim is the person who beheads the infidel, while the moderate Muslim holds the feet of the victim. – Marco Polo (c.1254 – January 8-9, 1324)RSK

If the same exact criticisms being made against Islam today were also made centuries ago, is it reasonable to automatically dismiss them all as “Islamophobic” — that is, as “unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam,” as the Council on American Islamic Relations [1] would have it?

This is the question I often ask myself whenever I read pre-modern writings on Islam. Take that elementary schoolbook hero, Marco Polo and his famous memoirs [2], for example. By today’s standards, the 13th century Venetian merchant would be denounced as a rabid “Islamophobe.” For me, however, his writings contain a far more important lesson — one in continuity — and deserve closer scrutiny.

Before examining Polo’s observations, it should be noted that his anthropological accounts are, by and large, objective. That is, unlike simplistic explanations [3] that portray him as a prototypical “Orientalist” with an axe to grind against the “Other” — specifically non-whites and non-Christians — in fact, Polo occasionally portrays the few Christians he encountered in a negative light (such as those of the island of Socotra) and frequently praises non-Christians, including Muslims.

For example, he hails the Brahmins of India as being “most honorable,” possessing a “hatred for cheating or of taking the goods of other persons. They are likewise remarkable for the virtue of being satisfied with the possession of one wife (p.298 [4]).” And he refers to one Muslim leader as governing “with justice” (p.317 [5]) and another who “showed himself [to be] a very good lord, and made himself beloved by everybody (p.332 [6]).”

That said, Polo clearly had no problem being blunt about Islam (political correctness being nonexistent in the Middle Ages). Whereas he praised the Brahmins for their “hatred for cheating or of taking the goods of other persons,” regarding the Muslims of Tauris, (modern day Iraq), he wrote:

AN ABC-Washington Post poll shows 61 percent of Democrats support Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, far more than other contenders. If she wins the White House, health reform could become even more painful than ObamaCare.

Clinton ducks questions about her views on health reform. But the plan she proposed in 1993, as first lady, raises concerns.

That proposal was even more coercive than ObamaCare. She put price controls on doctors and limits on how much health care the nation could consume annually and how much you could buy for your own family — even if you paid for it yourself.

True, that was 20 years ago. But it’s an important window into her thinking.

Before Americans choose candidates for 2016, they ought to ask how much power they want government to have over their health care and whether Clinton stands by the coercive plan she proposed the last time she was in the White House.

Start with whether the government should force us to have insurance. The Obama administration is using ads and street fairs to convince people to get covered. Millions are still saying “no.” ObamaCare penalizes the uninsured but also offers exemptions, including just pleading “hardship.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 90 percent of the uninsured will not be penalized.

Let Andrzejewski Open the Books in Illinois Governor-elect Rauner must appoint a comptroller. Adam Andrzejewski is the right man for the job.

Bruce Rauner’s triumph as the new Republican governor of Obama’s home state was the icing on the GOP’s national victory cake on Election Night. The cherry atop that frosting would be for Rauner to appoint open-government advocate Adam Andrzejewski as Illinois comptroller.

Rauner’s unusual and invaluable opportunity springs from tragedy.

Former comptroller Judy Baar Topinka died December 10, soon after suffering a stroke. She was 70. The veteran Republican officeholder’s unexpected departure allows Rauner to name someone to fill the four-year term to which Topinka, ironically, won reelection on November 4.

Adam Andrzejewski is the right man for this job. The 45-year-old resides in Hinsdale, a Chicago suburb, with his wife of 14 years and their three daughters. From 1997 to 2007, Adam and his younger brother, Abe, managed American Marketing and Publishing, the country’s largest producer of hometown telephone books. As the company reached 165 employees, 240 communities served, and $20 million in sales, Adam sold his shares, pocketed his winnings, and pivoted to public service.

Adam ran a conservative campaign for governor in 2010 and secured the endorsement of none other than Lech Walesa. The Cold War hero and post–Iron Curtain president of Poland flew to Chicago to campaign for Adam. The Nobel laureate declared: “I see the same qualities in Adam Andrzejewski as I saw in my friend Ronald Reagan.” Alas, the liberal local media largely overlooked these accolades, despite their newsworthy source. Adam ultimately lost the GOP primary.

Adam Andrzejewski receives the endorsement of Solidarity founder, Lech Walesa.

Undeterred, Adam used his own money to launch a non-profit called “For the Good of Illinois” and another, Open the Books. OTB has lived by its slogan: “Every dime, online, in real time.”